Is NBA Done Drafting Internationally?

June 27, 2012

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It all started in the summer of 1992.

That's the line you'll hear from most everyone — scouts, players, coaches both foreign and domestic — whenever you ask for the moment basketball became a global game. While it had long been popular in places like the Baltics, the Balkans, and the Philippines, the sport had few fans in other pockets of the world until the Dream Team's summer of smiling, sanitized dominance.

While Michael and Magic and Larry made their historic run, a woman named Meriem Moktaa Fournier sat at home in Saint-Maurice, France, 665 miles from Barcelona. Pregnant with a son she would name Evan, she had taken a break from her competitive judo career. Three months later she would give birth, bringing Evan into a world in which the Dream Team had already won gold, where Parisian blacktops were already teeming...

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